blind

Lots of us played Tony Hawk: Pro Skater and expected to leave the house doing kickflip to tailslide to bluntslide to that Chad Muska beats-slide where he pulls out a boombox. But very few of us could.

Still there are skateboarders who can trump the impossible things we’ve seen in video games. One of them is Dan Mancina, a skateboarder who is legally blind.

Mancina, who’s vision started to fade at 13, only has a slight amount of peripheral vision and a cane, but he’s still able to pull off some things most could only dream of — namely skating with a smooth controlled style. That’s the real money.

But according to Spolid, that’s not all that Mancina can do. In the video compilation “Dan Mancina Does Stuff Blind,” he chops wood, throws a bullseye, and fires a machine gun. Let this be an inspiration to all of us.

"I really feel this is the way I was supposed to be born, that I should have been blind from birth," the 30-year-old Shuping said.

Shuping's case is made even stranger by the fact that she worked with a psychiatrist to blind herself, presumably under the assumption that it was a treatment.

Even though she doesn't regret her decision, in fact now saying that she's never been happier, Shuping is trying to create awareness of BIID so that people don't take the route she did.

"Don't go blind the way I did. I know there is a need, but perhaps someday there will be treatment for it," Shuping said. "People with BIID get trains to run over their legs, freeze dry their legs or fall off cliffs to try to paralyze themselves.